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Emerging Poets Fellowship at Poets House

Now in its sixth year, the Emerging Poets Fellowship at Poets House provides poets an opportunity to receive guidance and instruction from distinguished and diverse faculty, and camaraderie and support from a cohort of engaged emerging voices. Students have access to Poets House’s extensive 70,000-volume library, unique archives, and wide-ranging programs. Tuition is free to those accepted into the program.

Funded annually by a generous grant from the Jerome Foundation, the fifteen-week program facilitates artistic, professional, and personal development through weekly workshops, individualized mentoring sessions, and craft discussions with visiting poets, and roundtables with experts on performance and contemporary publishing. The program culminates in a final group reading at Poets House. The 2017 Emerging Poets Fellowship will be taught by r. erica doyle. Distinguished Visiting Faculty will include Cathy Park Hong and Rickey Laurentiis.

2017 Fellowship

The 2017 Emerging Poets Fellowship will be led by r. erica doyle. Distinguished Visiting Faculty will include Cornelius Eady and others to be announced. Fellows will also meet one–on–one with the workshop leader and distinguished guests at times to be determined. Fellows are encouraged to attend events at Poets House throughout the Fellowship, and special visits from editors and publishers will be part of the program.

r. erica doyle was born in Brooklyn to Trinidadian immigrant parents. Her debut collection, proxy (Belladonna* Books, 2013), won the 2014 Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America and was a Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Poetry. Her work has been anthologized in Best American Poetry, Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Gay and Lesbian Writing from the Antilles, Gumbo: A Celebration of African American Writing, Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam, Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade and Voices Rising: Celebrating 20 Years of Black Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Writing. Her poetry and fiction appear in various journals, including Ploughshares, Callaloo, Bloom, From the Fishouse, Blithe House Quarterly and Sinister Wisdom.

Her articles and reviews have appeared in Ms. Magazine, Black Issues Book Review and on the Best American Poetry and Futurepoem blogs. She has received grants and awards from the Hurston/Wright Foundation, the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the Humanities Council of DC and Poets and Writers, and she was a New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellow. Erica is also a fellow of Cave Canem: A Workshop and Retreat for Black Writers.

In addition, she has read her work at the Kennedy Center, the National Black Arts Festival, Joe’s Pub, the Nuyorican, the Calabash International Literary Festival in Jamaica, WI and various colleges and universities. Erica received her MFA in Poetry from The New School, and lives in New York City, where she is an administrator in the NYC public schools and facilitates Tongues Afire: A Free Creative Writing Workshop for queer women and trans and gender non-conforming people of color.

Application Process

Poets House welcomes applications via Submittable and has extended the deadline for applications to December 12, 2016. Applicants are reviewed by a selection panel comprised of poets as well as Poets House staff. The panel will take into consideration the applicant's creative work and related achievements and financial/personal need. Accepted applicants will be notified by February 1, 2017.

The application period has been extended! It will close at 11:59 PM on December 12, 2016.

The application consists of three parts:

A one-page Personal Statement outlining how this fellowship will impact your career and how you will use this opportunity. This is the place to state any special personal or familial circumstances affecting your financial situation.